


unfolding as it should

by CommonEvilMastermind



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: F/M, Fix-It, Solas we are all still very mad at you, This was very cathartic to write, Well of Sorrows, angsty schmoop with a happy ending, i went wrong somewhere, this was supposed to be smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-10
Updated: 2016-08-07
Packaged: 2018-07-22 19:50:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,621
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7451848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CommonEvilMastermind/pseuds/CommonEvilMastermind
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Enough!” she shouts. “No more lies from a silver-tongued mongrel! I am not your Inquisitor, I am not your heart, I am your fool. The Fool of Fen’Harel!”</p><p>(The stupid well of stupid sorrows should have clued us in from the beginning. This is my favorite headcanon, now written here for you)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Dialogue in italics is intended to be in ancient Elvhen.

The headache fades, after a time, and the walls stop swinging on their axis and stay upright, as good walls should. The voices fade too, becoming a dull murmur at the back of her skull, a fast-running stream instead of a storm. She catches herself humming songs she has never learned, and remembering places she has never been.

Small prices to pay after drinking from the Well of Sorrows.

She can feel the knowledge stretching deep into her mind, fractals unfolding into limitless space. Here are the rituals, the songs, the stories, the memories – all her people had known and built and lost. Any moment she has (and these are not many) she spends with quill and parchment, trying to record the un-recordable, trying to press the memories into paper in case the worst should happen. If Corypheus takes her life, she will leave something behind.

The only thing she does not write are the dreams.

Dreams are dreams, of course. Not being a mage, she has no talent to walk the hidden pathways of the Fade. Her dreams are as everyone else’s – strange fragments of half-forgotten memory, pieces that did not happen, things that never would. They vanish like ghosts in the light of the morning sun. Except.

Not these dreams.

She dreams of a man in golden brocade, his voice low and kindly. He walks among the forest and greets the spirits there as if they are kin. She does not see his face. On waking, his voice disappears like mist in the morning breeze.

He makes his way gently through her dreams, this man, and she welcomes the distraction. Since Crestwood, her thoughts have been dark and preoccupied. _Sharpen your grief to an iron edge,_ he had said, as if he knew anything of her grief, her fear, her loneliness and anger. Better to let another – a wandering wish? A memory? – occupy her thoughts. The days are filled with the stink of sword-oil and the ringing of hammers as she prepared her company for war. In the evenings, she studies maps and reads reports until the letters become ghosts behind her eyelids. Only at night, and not for long, does she slip away. Only then does she allow herself to dream.

It is a memory, she thinks, as the days pressed into weeks. A memory walking with long, angry strides through shining towers of crystal and glass. A memory bathed in ashes, screaming on a battlefield long forgotten. His face slips out of her mind, like a reflection distorted in the water. Perhaps because it is a dream. Perhaps because of the Well. Perhaps because, somewhere, she already knows.

One night, the man wears a cloak of black wolf-skin. His spine is set and angry, and his staff sparks with the power of a thousand storms. He walks through a maze of mirrors, enemies scattered in his wake. She wakes with a childhood story on her lips.

 _Fen’Harel,_ she thinks to the memories that lay inside her head. _Do I dream of Fen’Harel?_ She receives no answer but a migraine, which does not mean yes, but does not mean no.

When he strides through her dreams now, it is not with gentleness. The memory of this man, unfolding in the Fade, is no longer kind and gentle. Giants weep at his passing, and demons fear to scream when he drew near. She sees him in a crowd, like the eye of the storm, and elves with clean faces are shouting in raging triumph, _Fen’Harel! Fen’Harel! Fen’Harel enasal!_

She wakes in a sweat, her stomach twisting. The echoes in her mind say, _Herald! Herald! Herald of Andraste!_

She does not sleep again for a very long time.

Corypheus is coming. Days and nights are one seamless press of troops and inspections and reports stained with dirt and mud and blood. The cold of Skyhold bites into her bones – her clothes are too loose, it is hard to get warm.

She dreams the world breaking, shattering in shards of crystal glass. The wolf kneels at a mirror, blooded and torn, and weeps. _Mas serannas,_ he whispers, hoarse with pain. _Mas serannas._ I’m sorry, I’m sorry.

She wakes, furious, tears on her cheeks, and she does not know why.

She does not know why, she does not know why, and she continues not to know why until she is standing in the Nightingale’s nest above the library and she hears his voice come up from below. Solas' voice. She has not seen him, they have not spoken in months - always avoiding, taking the other stairs. But his voice drifts up from below and suddenly she _knows._

It is a thunderbolt, a blade to the ribs, a key sliding home in a lock. She _knows._ She knows that voice, she knows that face, she knows that name, she has seen him in her dreams, it was, it is, and it couldn’t be-

 _yes,_ murmurs the magic in her mind. _yes_.

Fen’Harel.

_Shit._

She sits down, hard, as the pieces click into place. The Temple of Mythal, Adamant, even the Winter Palace-? _Where did you learn politics? I have seen it in the Fade._ His grasp of magic, the self-taught apostate who did not clunk-

No wonder he hates the Dalish. _They are wrong, your vallaslin, slave markings_ , the spell from his hands as effortless as a breath, as if he had done it a hundred times before. _You think walking in the Fade is such a great accomplishment?_

 _You mean so much to me, more than I have ever imagined, so I will tell you the most important thing: the truth._ The tiniest of hesitations, the fear that had flashed in his eyes-

The truth.

Someone is shaking her shoulder – “Inquisitor? Inquisitor! Inquisitor Lavellan!” She stands up, the anger rolling off her shoulders. Leliana looks at her, surprised, confused. “Inquisitor?”

 _“I’m going to kill him,”_ she hisses in Elvhen. She takes the stairs as a storm down a mountain, rolling with dark fury. He dared, he dared, he dares-

The door bursts open ahead of her. He is bent over his desk, straightens at her approach, hands tucked behind his back. _You sound different, Solas,_ Cole had said once. _Like the old songs._ She couldn’t hear them then, but she can now.

“Inquisitor,” he greets her. Polite indifference. “How may I help you prepare for our final battle?”

“ _You!”_ she roars in Elvhen. “ _You lying, insufferable, weasel-blooded dung hoarder! You false-faced, yellow-livered, coward heir of a whore. How dare, how DARE you stand here, you pizzled block of pus?!”_

Shock flashes over his features for an instant. He schools them to stony boredom. “Inquisitor-“

“ _Enough!”_ she shouts. “ _No more lies from a silver-tongued mongrel! I am not your Inquisitor, I am not your heart, I am your fool. The Fool of Fen’Harel!”_

She watches the word hit him like a physical blow, watches the blood drain from his face and she is glad, oh, she is glad to shatter that façade.

“ _This is your mark,_ ” she spits, the words of the oldest language like hot blood on her tongue. “ _This anchor, this orb, this Breach, this fortress – I will not be a pawn in your games, you puppy-headed son of a whelping bitch.”_

He is crystal, he is glass, he does not move, does not breathe, does not deny. Stands there, shocked and shattered as she attacks. She will shred, tear, rip through his tunic, his chest, his flesh and bone until she finds his heart, takes it whole.

But when he breathes out, his eyes close. She can see the relief etched into his shoulders, the curve of his neck, the way his hands fall to his sides. Behind his breath, he is so weary. It stops the bile up in her mouth.

“Not that I’m not enjoying this little domestic,” someone drawls from far overhead. “But perhaps you would like to take the show to a more private location.” She drags her eyes from Solas – the galleries overhead are filled with wide eyes and curious faces, mages and servants and spies peering at her from above. Dorian lounges on the railing in a blood-red robe, posture careless, brows tight with worry.

She wishes for an instant she was a mage. Her fury would set the whole rotunda afire.

Instead she pulls in a breath, letting the cool air hit the back of her throat. Her anger settles into sick embers in the pit of her belly. She turns, walks away, footsteps soft with an elf's grace.

She knows he follows behind her. He is as silent as a wolf.

The Great Hall is pale candlelight and paler faces, both wavering and without substance. The stone of Skyhold grounds her as she walks. Her mountain, her fortress, her mark, her soul, her heart. She is no game piece for the Old Wolf. She is her own, a Herald of herself, and she burns.

Josephine, at her desk, looks up when the door swings open. Whatever she sees, her mouth shuts, and she does not say. Cullen stands planning in the war room, lit by the light of too many candles. They flicker in the draft as she opens the door. Cullen looks up and swallows, hard.

“I, well, I actually was just leaving.” He gathers his papers in a careless pile, watching her. Watching Solas. “I’ll close the door behind me.” She does not look at him, just let her eyes slide over the patterns of colored glass in the window. The door closes behind him with a thud that echoes – there is a weight to it greater than simple sound.

She is alone with the Dread Wolf.

She does not look at him, just listens to him breathe. Walks to the table. Plants her hands, slowly and deliberately, on the ancient wood. He shifts, somewhere by the door. A silent battle of will – she waits.

“How do you know?” His voice is level.

“A dream,” she says, calm and poisonously pleasant. “A series of dreams, even, from the Well of Sorrows. The priests of Mythal remember you, Fen’Harel.”

“Of course.”

“Of course.” The words roll like stones from her lips, heavy and smooth. She picks up a small dagger, plays with it on her fingers. “And what, now, shall we do? I suppose I must be wary. The Dread Wolf has my scent.” Metal flashes. He does not flinch. The dagger does not brush him as it flies past his cheek, buries itself deep in the wood of the great doors. She draws herself up, pins him with her gaze. “ _Or perhaps it is I who have the scent of the wolf._ ”

“You will do as you will,” Solas murmurs in the trade tongue. His shoulders are unbowed. “I have never been able to convince you otherwise.”

“ _I am not your puppet,_ ” she snaps.

 _“Nor ever you have been,”_ he agrees. Elvhen feels natural from his lips, like a half-remembered song. She loves to hear him speak it, now that she can understand. The impulse, like a heartbeat, stokes her fury once more.

“How much of it was real?” she snaps, boiling to the worst betrayal. “How much was a lie? _Why did you pretend to love me, you vicious, senseless bastard?”_ The words wrench out of her, pulling the pain with them. _“Why did you tell me I was your heart?”_

He looks at her, then, all pretense put away. His face is open, and his eyes –

“ _I never meant to love you,_ ” he says softly. “ _I never meant to hurt you._ The Breach came, and you burned so brightly, carrying my mark. You should have died, and yet you carried on, bringing hope where there was none, an impossible dawn. And when I came to know you…” He closes his eyes, and the tears gathered there spill over onto his cheek, rolls down to the dimple of his chin.

She knows that wretchedness, that bone-deep grief. It burns like a scar under her skin.

“Loving you was never pretend,” he says with gentle, ancient sorrow. He lets his tears fall. “ _Ar lath, ma vhenan. You are my heart._ I have always believed in telling the truth.”

“ _You left,”_ she hisses, but her throat is thick. _“You lied.”_

“ _I was afraid,_ ” Solas says. “ _You are far braver than I have ever been._ ”

“I don’t believe you,” she says, wretched. “I can’t.”

“ _I know._ ”

The grief in her throat is hot and hard. She is crying now, too. “Get out. _Get out!”_

“Inquisitor.” He bows his head. “ _Vhenan.”_

She weeps, and she does not hear his footsteps. Only the door as it shuts behind him with a final, horrid crash. She should let him go, she should-

_She does not want to lose him._

The realization hits her like a wave, adrenaline freeing her feet from the floor. “Solas!” she screams, running. “Solas!” She throws open the door, but the hallway is bare. She missed him, he has gone, she has lost him forever – “Solas!” her voice is hoarse with shouting.

An intake of breath, a shifting of cloth – he had sunk to the ground on the other side of the door, fallen to his knees on the hard stone. He looks up. His face is wrecked and ruined, his eyes are blind with tears.

“Solas.” She sinks to her knees and reaches for him and he is here, she has him, she is holding him, her arms are wrapped around his neck and she cries into the smoothness of his skin. He gasps raggedly like it is his first breath and he is holding her so tightly, his tears are hot against her shirt and she has him. She holds him. It’s okay. It is going to be okay.


	2. Chapter 2

His head is thoroughly wet with tears by the time she pulls away, just a little. His face is a disaster, blotched and red, and she is no better. It makes her laugh, the mess they are. Solas snorts ungainly, but his eyes are amused as she dries them with her sleeve.

He reaches up and brushes a thumb through the stains from her tears. She catches his hand and presses it to her cheek, feeling the strength, the warmth, his smell like a memory. He cradles her face as if she were a rare and beautiful thing. It is nothing to turn, just a little, to lay a kiss in the center of his palm.

It is not fixed. It is not over. Behind herself, the anger slinks to a low boil, the worry and fury and doubt. But it is Solas, _Solas-_

His eyes are shining like she has never seen.

She kisses them, gently, the tear-stains on his face, each freckle, the constellations that dance upon his skin. His lips under hers are chapped and worried, frayed from the dark months behind them. Each kiss is slow, barely brushing, full of wonder.

He did not think this moment would ever come.

The realization hits hard, stealing her breath. She presses her forehead to his own, mind racing. Without him, she faces quick death or bright victory. But he, he walks the road of the dead. No one beside him. No one had _known-_

His greatest fear, etched on a tombstone in the Nightmare. Dying alone.

“ _My heart?”_ he whispers, his hand on her cheek. She looks up, sees the worry in his face.

She fists the front of his tunic. “ _I am not letting you go,_ ” she tells him, in a tone that brooks no argument.

A weary smile flickers on the corner of his mouth and he makes an agreeable sound. It’s a nice sound, sweet and happy, so she leans forward to kiss him. Unfortunately her legs have cramped on the cold flagstones and they seize as she moves. She yelps and pitches forward, which could have been romantic – falling into his arms – except her nose slams into his chin.

“Shit, shit, ow.” She falls back on her rear. “I’m sorry, are you-?”

“Are you injured?” His hands are warm.

“No, I’m fine, my leg just cramped.”

Solas sighs a little breath and his magic flows under her skin. Her nose stops throbbing quite so much, and her muscles relax. It does nothing to ease the embarrassment.

“I’m a mess,” she says, rubbing her palms in her eyes.

“Perhaps we should move to another location?” he suggests.

“Probably.” She tries to stand up, but his arms tighten around her and she falls into his lap.

“Solas?”

“Mm?”

“That means you’ll have to let go of me.”

“A foul trick,” he mutters. She slides out of his arms and rolls to her feet, pulling at his hand.

“Up you go, come on.”

He grumbles. “I am too old for this.”

“Too old for getting a kiss?” she teases. He looks down at her, scowling, so she bops up on her toes and kisses him lightly. It startles a smile out of him, so she kisses that too, then again, sprinkling them on his lips and cheeks and the line of his jaw, the cleft of his chin, the sweet, soft spot on his neck right above his collar.

He tries to catch her lips with his own, but she darts away to assault his earlobe. Again and again, she dodges until he is laughing, laughing, a golden sound that sinks into her bones. He buries his face in her shoulder and she wraps her arms around his neck.

She is so happy. This cannot be a lie.

Then comes a thunk from the door to Josie’s office.

Solas flinches like a wild cat, stiffening.

She frowns at the door and mouths _spies?_

He nods, eyes narrow.

 _Quiet,_ she motions, and they creep to the door. She presses her ear against the old wood and Solas follows suit. Mischief glints in his eyes.

“…Solas laugh?” Cullen is saying doubtfully.

“I know, I know,” Varric says. He can’t be more than an inch away from the other side of the door. “But that’s what I heard!”

“Come now, Varric” Dorian drawls. “If we are to make up impossible things, it seems more likely that the Inquisitor summoned a dragon and ate him whole.”

“Perhaps she turned into a dragon,” Cullen suggests reasonably.

“Oh, I didn’t even consider that.” Dorian is pleased. “What do you think, Josephine?”

“I think the Inquisitor deserves more respect than we are affording her,” Josie says, but the conflict is obvious in her voice.

“We’re not spying!” Varric protests, obviously hurt. “We’re concerned for her well-being.”

“Absolutely,” Dorian agrees. “We can’t have her actually eat Solas. Think of the indigestion.”

The Inquisitor in question hits her head gently against the door. Solas looks to be wavering between amused and resigned. She holds up three fingers. Then two. Then one.

“VARRIC TETHRAS!” she bellows, crashing through the door. Varric tumbles backwards onto his ass, Dorian levitates a good ten inches off the ground, Cullen half-draws his sword, and Josie nearly spills an entire bottle of ink. “How DARE you eavesdrop into the personal affairs of the Herald of Andraste, look at you, all of you. I’m ashamed. I swear, you’re going straight to the Void.”

Cullen stifles what must have been a cough, even though his eyes are laughing.

“Look at you!” she shouts through a smile. “A disgrace to the Inquisition, a disgrace.” Solas is a warm presence at her heels as she stalks through the room. She hopes he has his best, most scowly face on. “I am ashamed to know you, ashamed. I should hang you from the watchtower by your toes.”

She throws open the door to the bowels of Skyhold, glaring for dramatic effect. Varric is getting to his feet, studying her, smiling. Josie is trying to look serious, but her eyes give her away. Cullen looks one part embarrassed to two parts pleased, and Dorian just looks pleased.

“Don’t you EVER do that again,” she scolds. Dorian holds out his hand. She high-fives him and slams the door behind her, quickly pressing her ear against the wood on the other side. Solas, amused, follows suit.

There is only silence from inside the room.

Then someone – it can’t have been Josie – whoops in joy and everyone starts talking at once.

“Fifty crowns, dwarf, you owe me _fifty_ gold crowns-!”

“Yes, yes, I do, Sparkler, and I’ll pay. Andraste’s tits, what did she say to him?”

“It’s about time someone around here got a happy ending.”

“The Lady Inquisitor and Solas, smiling – both smiling! I must tell Leliana.”

“If Red doesn’t know already, I’ll eat my boots. Cassandra, however…”

“Do you think now they’ll stop brooding around like two enormous storm clouds?”

“Chuckles? Never. It’s in his blood.”

“He was smiling when they came in.”

“She is the Herald, miracles are kind of her thing.”

“What _is_ the process to nominate someone for sainthood?”

“Ha! A Dalish saint?”

“She’d hate it.”

“Yes she would. Let’s do it.”

“ _Dorian-”_

“Wait.” The room falls still. Varric says, softly, “Did we hear them go up the stairs?”

They bolt up the stairs together, breathless with laughter, until they reach the Inquisitor’s chambers. She slams the door behind them, turns the key in the lock, and falls down giggling on the steps that lead to the rest of the room. He’s sprawled out on them, all long legs and dancing eyes. It’s easy, too easy, to fall into his lap, wrap her arms around his chest, breathe him in.

He’s warm and solid under her fingers and real, real, not a memory or a dream half-remembered. The world stops spinning for one long, sweet moment – the hitches in his breath, the scratchiness of his tunic against her cheek, the smell of him. Leather, yes, and dust, maybe herbs, but Solas, Solas, Solas. A magnet, a lodestone. She had tried (oh she had tried) to re-adjust, recalibrate, forget, but North kept pointing to wherever he was.

Dangerous, yes, dangerous, to be so wrapped up in him. The Inquisitor… as the Inquisitor, she should have walked away. The Inquisitor wasn’t a woman, though – she was a part to play, a mask, an empty suit of armor with a voice that echoed throughout Thedas. The Inquisitor was a legend, a myth in the making.

The woman inside the myth was much more fallible. She needed to eat and piss and sleep. She needed to laugh and cry and love.

“Vhenan,” he murmurs into her hair. “What troubles you?”

“Mmm.” She makes a pleased noise and buries her face into the curve of his neck. “You were never Fen’Harel with me,” she says. “Not even on that night.”

“No,” he says. “At first, I attempted to keep my distance. Maintain the façade.”

“It only holds so long.” She thinks of the days in Orlais, of moving around Skyhold when it is flooded with guests. She can lose herself inside the Inquisitor’s stride for days, sometimes weeks. But alone, or with those she loves –

“You came to trust us,” she realizes aloud. “Trust me. Why?”

His snort is not elegant. “You decided to trust me first. Weighed me and accepted me. When I spoke, you would listen. You came to me for wisdom, for advice. You decided I was part of this, of everything – that I was one of yours, and I was worth protecting.” He shifts her on his lap, pulling her closer. “It was, perhaps, one of the first discussions we had. At Haven. You said you would not let them harm me – not because I was an elf, or an apostate, but because I was one of your own. I asked you how and you said - ”

“However I had to,” she finishes.

“Yes.” She can feel his soft smile. “Like a mother bear, protecting her cubs. You woke up in chains and promptly decided that everyone in Thedas was yours to care for. _I_ was yours – you placed your trust in me. Despite myself, I could not help but do the same.”

Now she snorts. “Romantic as ever.”

“Is it romance you wish?” his tone is arch and he stands, holding her in both arms. She yelps and clings to him. “Shall I carry you over the threshold like a knight of old? Bring you roses? Recite you poetry?” He sweeps up the stairs, grand in his plain tunic and leggings. “What is my heart’s desire?”

“A kiss?” she says, laughing at how weightless she feels in his arms. The scratchy wool hides a strength she would never have expected from an elvhen apostate.

“Oh?” he says with pomposity. “I offer you the stars in the sky, the wonders of the deep – this is all you ask for?”

“A kiss from the Dread Wolf,” she teases, then regrets as his back straightens stiffly. “No, better. More rare. A kiss from a man named Solas who, in his own way, knows wisdom.”

He sits down hesitantly on the rich red velvet couch that sits before the hearth. A fire crackles merrily, waiting for them. “More rare indeed.”

“Did the Dread Wolf kiss a lot of women?” she wonders. “Did Solas?”

“As the Dread Wolf -” he pauses, and she almost is sorry she asked. “The Dread Wolf made alliances as they were needed. I stopped – he stopped when potential… allies became too frightened to say no. Solas -” he breaks off with an aggravated puff of air. “The two are not as easily disentangled as you seem to think.”

She makes a small noise of understanding. “I understand. I know you’re only here with me because I’m the Inquisitor, after all.” It is meant as a joke, but the shadows on his face grow dark.

“No,” he says. “ _Never say such a thing.”_

“Then it’s because of my irresistible womanly wiles.” She wiggles her hips in his lap and is immediately fascinated by the results. Before she can investigate further, he moves to the side, leaving her sitting on the couch. “Ack.”

“Vhenan,” he says, with enough urgency that she forgets to be annoyed. He captures her hands – the right, unmarked. The left, seared from the imprint of his soul. She meets his eyes, and the depth of emotion there terrifies her. “ _I am here because I love you_.”

“And because I drank from the Well and found you out.” She refuses to lose herself in him.

“You did,” he admits. “ _No more secrets, no false pretenses._ You know, and you forgave me.”

“No,” she corrects him. “No one said anything about forgiveness, not – ugh.” She stands up from the couch, the thoughts too big in her head to sit still. “I’m still thinking, Solas – what you said and didn’t say, what you did, Solas, _what you wanted to do._ I’m… not okay about that.”

The mask shutters over his face, but not before she glimpses the fear, the worry, the hurt. “Do you wish me to leave?” he asks, careful.

“No,” she says, climbs back on his lap, straddles his knees, pins him down. “No. But I can be mad and still want you.” She cups his face in her hand, brings his eyes up to meet her own. “I can be upset about all those things, and still be happy that you’re here. With me. Not down in your rotunda, shutting yourself away. _Preparing to die in the dark alone._ I can be furious with you, Solas, and I can love you.” She sniffs, though she doesn’t mean to.

His face is unreadable. He touches her like fine porcelain, draws her in until he can wrap his arms around her, bury his face in her clavicle. “You are within your rights to call for execution,” he says, voice muffled in the cloth of her shirt. “The Rite of Tranquility. Exile, banishment, imprisonment.”

“You’re right.” She nods into the top of his head. “And so I will demand my dues.”

“And they are?”

“A kiss.” He pulls away just enough to look at her through narrowed eyes. She folds her arms, stubborn, laughing.

“How can you treat this so lightly?” he asks.

 “I have you _back._ ” Her voice breaks. “You came _back_ and I have you, and it’s not – and you love me, it’s not my _fault_ but I fixed it. I thought, I thought – maybe you left because of me, because of my vallaslin -”

“ _No, no!_ ” he says. “ _They are you, no, you have made them beautiful -”_

 _“I thought I wasn’t good enough,”_ she says. “I thought you didn’t love me.”

“ _No.”_

“ _I have you back,”_ she says, stubbornly. “I fixed it. I found you.” She swallows. “I love you.”

“Vhenan.” His face is awe and wonder. “ _Where you are, I am home.”_

“Yes,” she sniffles, rubbing at her eyes. “Good. And you’re going to stay?”

A small breath, almost laughter. “ _Yes_. Yes. I will stay.”

She glares at him. Her eyes are red. “I’ll still need that kiss though.”

He surges up to meet her, to tell her the things that cannot find words. He kisses with abandon, with joy, the thundering relief of one who long expected to die. She laughs under the assault and he kisses that too, running his hands up the outside of her legs. They skim under the hem of her jacket, his fingertips fire on the line of her skin.

This is an excellent idea. She reaches down to slip her hands under the bottom of his tunic, but he is wearing an undershirt, damn, tight against his leggings. He reaches behind himself, tugs his tunic up over his head – oh, much better WAIT.

“Hold on!” she says and he freezes like her words were made of ice. His undershirt is tighter against his frame, making incredible shadows in the flickering light of the fire. They are both breathing hard. “You should – maybe, don’t do that.”

The joy falls from his face, almost imperceptible. “Ah.”

“No, it’s just – if you take off any more clothing, I mean any more, I’m going to want to have sex with you.”

A wicked smile curls across his mouth. He slowly begins to lift his undershirt.

“No, no, no, no, stop!” she lunges forward, capturing his hands, glaring at him. “Solas! I want to have sex with you.”

“Then perhaps you should let go of my hands,” he suggests in a low, golden voice that goes straight down her spine.

“No, wait!” She takes a breath. “Solas. Do you want to have sex with me.” It comes out in a rush, all one word.

“Yes,” he says.

She lets out a long breath, but doesn’t let go of his hands. “Oh. Good. You didn’t before.”

“I would not. Not – it was not right. That you didn’t know.”

“Right.” He’s there, in the firelight, she’s on his lap and _blast_ she can feel him, hard under his leggings. “Okay. Sex. Yes. Um. I have witherroot, so I can make tea in the morning, so that’s…” He shifts underneath her and she whacks his shoulder. “Stop. This is important. What – what do you want to do, what do you not want?”

He says, “ _Isalan pala na,”_ which means “I want to make love to you” and is incredibly unhelpful given the circumstances.

“Ugh.” She glares at him. “Okay. My boundaries. No arse stuff, I don’t have the right slick for it. I don’t like piss, shit, or blood in bed. But hands, mouth, _edhis,_ yes, good, okay. Your turn.” She seems to be distracting him so she slides off his lap and smiles at him wickedly.

He blinks, and she watches him gather his thoughts. It takes a while. She is perversely pleased. “I dislike-” His fingers stretch, settle. “I dislike extreme imbalances of power.”

“In bed, or in general?” she teases. “You mean like Bull.”

“Yes.” He nods, swallows. Her eyes follow the line of his neck. “Also, insulting, degrading. Name calling. Bed-play focused around shame. Exhibitionism. Voyeurism. Sharing.”

“Right, that’s good. Any thing you don’t want me to touch?”

He shakes his head, and the mischief is alight in the corner of his mouth. “I will be interested when you obtain the ‘right kind of slick.’”

She grins. “Oh? For you or for me?”

He cocks an eyebrow with a smirk and, yes, now they have covered their bases. There seems to be no reason why they are still wearing trousers.

Solas seems to have no disagreement.

She has imagined this moment for, well, too long to happily admit to – the warmth of him, the strength of him, the pleasure rippling through her bones. But there had been no way to imagine the way he breathed when her clothing fell away, the gentle reverence with which he touched her skin.

They were only themselves, together – a whole universe of two. He was searing fire, serious and driven, the weight of thousands of years pressing into his skin. She was the wind, dancing, teasing, stoking the flames. She led him, quicksilver, across the room. He pinned her to the floor and called the pleasure out of her, and she laughed with joy into his skin.

And the moment they came together, he made a soft noise like a lost thing. She hummed with joy and ran her hands across his back, grounding him, holding him, keeping him safe. If they stayed like that for a very long time, it seemed only natural. If tears were shed into the hollow of her collarbone, she would never say.

The wind did not howl so horribly, that night. And when they slept, it was in peace, knowing that the shadow of the wolf had been banished from their door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is very silly. I hope you like it.
> 
> I'm practicing my smut, so there might be a chapter 3 that goes into more detail. Who knows!
> 
> Thanks for love, thanks for reading! You can always find me here or on tumblr.

**Author's Note:**

> One of these days, I will be free from Solavellen Hell (but it is not this day).
> 
> Thank you for reading!  
> The title is from Max Ehermann's Desiderata, one of my favorite poems.


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